


Closing Remarks

by verboseDescription



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Cancer, Death, Gen, Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, The End, The Skin Book | Catalogue of the Trapped Dead (The Magnus Archives), the inherent romance of being the one to help a ghost move on, the specific mental health cocktail that comes from being raised by mary keay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:36:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28230261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verboseDescription/pseuds/verboseDescription
Summary: Every time they call him from his page, it feels like taking his last breath, one more time. Gerry's not sure how much more he can take.A look at Gerry after death, and everything that still haunts him.
Relationships: Gerard Keay & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Trevor Herbert & Gerard Keay & Julia Montauk
Comments: 25
Kudos: 80





	Closing Remarks

**Author's Note:**

> cws: discussion of cancer and its symptoms, references to child abuse, self-harm (mentioned, not described), medical abuse (very briefly mentioned, not described, and not about Gerry), obsessive-compulsive behaviors
> 
> Any ghost story, or fact about death is completely accurate. I would never lie to you about hauntings.

The first time the hunters call him, he’s still in the hospital, final thoughts clear enough in his mind that it steals his voice.

The room he’s in is dimly lit and accented with the color of blood. In front of him stand two hunters, cast in the same hue. He sees this and registers none of it. His mind still lives where his heart stopped beating. He cannot imagine a world beyond the smell of antiseptic in his last days.

“Gerard Keay?” the woman asks, hesitant. “You’re—we’ve been looking for you.”

The memory of his final breath plays over and over in his mind. Gerry stares blankly. 

Moments ago, his head had ached so fiercely he had almost begged for his mother. He had felt his consciousness fade with such a sharp relief he’s certain he died with tears in his eyes.

He feels no pain.

It hurts.

“Give him a minute,” the old man tells her. “He’s been dead for months.”

The woman ignores him.

“We just have a few questions,” she says.

Gerry wants to tell her to fuck off. That he’s lived his whole life being a tool for an uncaring woman, and he’s not keen on a repeat of that in death. But all there is to him now is memories, and the memories of the child he once was are desperate to make themself useful.

“Okay.” In his mind, his voice is hoarse from disuse, but the reality of his words feel soft and timid. “What do you want to know?”

The second time he’s called, he’s more aware of the way the book tugs at his soul. Gerry knows he had the chance for rest, that something must have happened in between the first summoning and this one, but all he remembers is the hospital, the _please stay with me,_ the _I don’t want to die alone,_ and the final spark of anger as his body seizes one last time. He can almost taste the blood on his lips from when he bit them. Anything to stop himself for begging for the comfort of a monster.

The sound of his heart monitor failing rings in his ears as the hunters ask their questions. Idly, Gerry wonders if it still counts as a hallucination if you’re dead. Maybe now, it’s just another kind of haunting.

“Okay,” Gerry interrupts. “Look, I’ll help you, but only if I get something in return.”

The woman snorts. The man elbows her.

“And what can the two of us do for a ghost like yourself?” he asks.

“Burn my page,” Gerry says immediately. “Whatever you’re hunting, I’ll help you find it, but that’s it. If it takes a while, fine, I get it. But once it’s done, so am I.”

The hunters look at each other for a moment.

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” the woman says with a shrug. “We’re not too keen on having ghosts running around.”

“Looks like we’ve got something we’ve got in common, then,” Gerry says. 

Their questions are easy enough to answer. It’s only about a half hour before Gerry gets to close his eyes and let the relief of death wash over him. But as soon as he does, he feels the call— _the smell of the hospital, the echoes of his own loneliness, the pain, oh, the pain—_ and he’s back again.

It’s hard to tell how much time has passed, but he thinks the snow’s melted, now. He can just about glimpse outside from one of the hotel windows. They’re in a different building this time, too.

He had to have been dead for some time. Weeks, at least. 

It’s a shame he remembers none of it. He thinks it might have been peaceful.

The hunters tell him that they haven’t found the monster they were looking for, but they managed to track down a friend.

It doesn’t sound right, but he doesn’t argue. Of course he knew there were creatures that didn’t hunt alone, but he’d thought what they were after was Lonely, and anything something like _that_ deemed a friend had to be six kinds of useful if a Forsaken thought they were worth keeping around.

Gerry tells them to be careful. It’s kinder than accusing them of stringing him along. They dismiss him without another word.

And so, once again, Gerard Keay takes his final breath.

_I will die on my own terms. I will not beg for someone to save me. My end belongs to me._

He closes his eyes.

And opens them.

The monster is still not dead, or so the hunters claim. 

“I’m starting to think I gave you some bad advice,” Gerry jokes. He wonders if they can hear the anger in his tone, or if death has robbed him of even that form of self expression. 

“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” the man says. He smiles. His teeth are sharper than they used to be.

That’s one benefit of seeing the world in snapshots, at least. Always so much easier to see what someone’s turning into.

One more, Gerry thinks. They get one more chance.

The thing about fainting is, you don’t always feel it coming. Sometimes there’s a sense of foreboding. A heaviness to your limbs that you can’t explain until—

And you’re gone. 

Sometimes, it feels like a glitch. Like closing your eyes and opening them somewhere new. Like finding yourself sprawled out at the bottom of a staircase and not remembering the fall. Like the world exists while you do not.

It’s a feeling he’s growing more familiar with the longer time marches forward without him. Every time the hunters wake Gerry up, he remembers the confusion of an undiagnosed sickness. The _I’m not supposed to be here,_ the _my body is not supposed to do this, I should not have fallen down so easily._

Certain things have become more clear with his death. It’s easier now, to admit that he had always known something was wrong. 

But that had never been his problem.

What had plagued Gerry wasn’t so much a lack of awareness, but the fact he had grown up with the knowledge of the crawling rot. His mother had taught him to view sickness as a personal failing. To not discriminate between the desperation of the Corruption buzzing in his system from the pain of being a child with a fever. If he cried out, if he begged to be held, to be comforted in any way, it was always the illness, and not him.

Maybe, if he had been brought up with a normal life, if he had been raised by someone who cared about _him_ instead of just a continuation of her own existence, he would have gone to the doctor. Instead, he feels the heaviness of his limbs and tries to burn it out by stabbing his cigarettes out against his skin.

Gerry doesn’t believe in Robert Smirke, but lessons of balance haunt him all the same. And what he knows, more than anything, is that there is nothing that destroys the rot like a cleansing flame.

(Gertrude doesn’t notice when he flinches at her touch. It doesn’t surprise him. She never had before.)

  
  


“We found something else. It’s not the same problem, but it’s bothering some locals. And I mean, you want to save people, right? That’s what you did?”

No. Go away.

“They think it’s a ghost, but—”

Oh? They want to talk about _ghosts?_ Is that it? Well, he has plenty of things to say about _that._

Did they know, that down in Mexico, there’s a mannequin that should have been a bride? She spends her time trapped in her shop window, still dressed for her wedding. Now she watches from her shop window as others get to live the life she so desperately wishes she had.

In Argentina, a corpse is exhumed looking like a sleeping woman. The people call it a miracle because they don’t know her husband started the embalming process while she was still alive. 

Not what they were looking for? Of course. A bit more solid than what they’re looking for, probably. How about something a bit closer to home?

There’s a piper stuck in the tunnels under Edinburgh Castle.

See, a long time ago, when the tunnels were first discovered, no one could actually go down and explore the area, because there wasn’t enough space for an adult to walk through. So they ask a kid to go down for them instead. They pay him, because they’re not monsters, just idiots, and tell him to play his pipes while he walks so everyone else could make a map from the outside. And for a while, it works pretty well. The kid plays, and the people follow. 

And then they hit Tron Kirk and the music stops.

They send search parties down after the kid, but it’s no use. They have his location mapped out, but still can’t find anything, not even a body. So, they seal up the tunnels. Declare it too dangerous for the public and try to forget about what they’ve done.

They say you can still hear him, sometimes. He’s still playing that stupid bagpipe, just like he was told. They promised him they wouldn’t lose him, but they _did,_ and he’s scared. He wants to go home. It hurts to stay in the dark. And he _knows_ someone’s out there, so why aren’t they helping? Why are they acting like they can’t _hear_ him?

He still doesn’t understand. He did everything they asked. So why—

  
  
  


The moment before your death isn’t meant to last forever, but that’s what it feels like, being in the book. 

There’s no life left to try and extend so all they can do is play what they have on repeat. Gerry’s nothing more than a broken record now, all his pain and fear stuck in a loop until, finally, someone takes pity on him and skips ahead to the end. But that doesn’t fix it, not really. The disc will still stutter the moment it turns on.

That’s the part Gerry hates. Not his death, but the constant reminder of it. The desperation marked into his soul, demanding that someone end it now, because he’s not sure how much longer he can take. The reminder that this, like everything, is something he’s being forced to fight through alone. The knowledge that he _did_ find peace, and that he keeps finding it, every time he’s dismissed, but that it never lasts for more than a moment because there is always, _always,_ more work to be done. It’s the constant reminder that no matter what he does, no matter how hard he fights, how much he kicks and screams, he will never be anything more than an echo of one very bad day.

It’s not death Gerry has a problem with. It’s the _being._

  
  


(Much as he hates to admit it, it does explain something about his mum. Gerry’s last thoughts are all he is, and he knows _she_ died angry. The rage that bubbled up in her chest never left. He could see it in her eyes, when he left her bleeding on the floor.

 _“Ungrateful child,”_ she spits. The words etch themselves onto her skin. He sees them in his jail cell, when she curses him out through the bars. He sees them at home, when he tries to chase away nightmares with bad habits. Sometimes, he even sees them on Gertrude, when he lags too far behind.

Another echo, playing on repeat.

 _Ungrateful child, unruly brat, can’t you just for_ once _do as you're told?_

And so Mary Keay ended.

And so she lives on, forever more.)

  
  
  
  
  


“Planning to be more helpful this time?”

“Fuck you.”

“Look, I get it—we don’t like the dead anymore than you like _being_ dead. But there’s a lot out here in America, and we’re not foolish enough to try and fight it off alone.”

“And you want me to stay here, all quiet and helpful, while you go off on another murder spree? Not happening.”

“Usually, we only kill one or two people. Not much of a _spree,_ really.”

“Not the point, old man.”

“The point is, we’re not the only ones who want your book. How do you think we heard about it? We’ve already fought off two different people looking for you. And _they_ wanted to make _more_ of you. At least _we_ let you rest. And we’re only asking about _other_ monsters. But if you’re not worth the danger you’re bringing… maybe we’ll just give you to whoever comes next. And if they want to ruin your ink, or scratch your page when you get a bit too mouthy… well, guess that’s not really _our_ problem anymore, is it?”

“...”

“Well?”

“It’s not my book.”

“And?”

“And, _fine,_ I’ll answer your damn questions.”

  
  


Seasons change. Gerry doesn’t.

It’s a strange feeling, to know that everyone but you has felt the year pass. When he thinks about how long it’s been since his death, it still only feels like a day. The longer he thinks about it, the more sense wars against that statement like the untwisting of a spiral.

There is an unstoppable confusion that comes from being something that should not/could not interact with the world around him. There’s an utter hysteria in the newness of it all. The pain of being something that Once Was, trying to interact with a world that still is. 

He had thought he knew what it felt like to reach out and feel nothing, but the absence of a caring hand was nothing like the absolute void of living an unprovable existence.

Eventually, it occurs to him to ask about the only other people who know might relate.

“You didn’t burn any of the pages,” Gerry says. “For someone who claims to hate ghosts, you sure keep a lot of us around.”

The woman glares at him.

“It’s not like we were given a manual on this,” she snaps. “It’s a book. We didn’t want to ruin it. Don’t make this something it’s not.”

“Sure,” Gerry says. “You going to burn them now, then? It won’t mess with my page. I can promise that.”

“Maybe,” she says. She won’t. “Some of them are kind of helpful, even if none of them know the things you do. Did you know one of them’s a doctor?”

“She was my family physician, actually,” Gerry deadpans. He doesn’t tell her he knows every name in the book. Doesn’t mention that his mum used to read him their pages as bedtime stories.

He thinks she’d be happy to know that Dr. Tellison’s still suffering. That the childish scrawl of her page meant for a crueler afterlife than the almost careful hand that had marked Gerry’s skin.

Sometimes, he wonders what it feels like to have been so improperly buried.

  
  
  


Here’s another ghost story, since it’s all he’s good for:

Gerry’s seven the first time he goes to Edinburgh. Small enough to squeeze into crawl spaces, and old enough to know what happens if he doesn’t do what he’s told.

They don’t find the piper. 

But that doesn’t mean the castle is empty.

(The boy plays his drums, seemingly unaware of his missing head. What Gerry learns is, there is always someone who will find a use for you, no matter how little of you there is left.)

  
  
  


Gerry opens his eyes to the sound of cursing. 

The man’s holding his arm, putting pressure on his still bleeding wounds. From the ashen complexion his skin has taken on, Gerry’s guessing they called him to talk about the poison.

“It won’t last,” he says. “There’s not enough in your system to kill you.”

“Still hurts, though,” the man complains.

“Living tends to,” Gerry tells him.

“But not as much as dying, I’ll bet,” the woman says. “So you’ve still got that going for you, old man.”

“The moment you die will be no different from this one,” Gerry intones. What he doesn’t say is, after his burns faded, he’d convinced himself he’d been fighting the wrong entity. That with the nausea and the way his body kept going weightless without his consent, the thing hunting him could only be either Vast and Spiral. He doesn’t tell them that, in his rare moments of freedom, he would crawl underneath his hotel bed and prayed for the pressure to give him back form. Gertrude had noticed only once. There were leads to follow, creatures to case down, and statements to record. Plenty of excuses for her not to have noticed the way his mind tortured itself, or the increasing amount of rest he needed, or any of the other hundreds of signs that might have tipped her off that something was wrong.

In the end, that was all death was. Not a single action, but the march forward to oblivion. Not the finale, but the constant turning of pages that turn into an end.

It’s the first time he fainted, and brushed it off as low iron, or forgetting to eat breakfast that morning. It’s the second time he fainted, and the way he couldn’t help but wonder if there was something _he_ was doing wrong. It’s the third, and the forth, and every bit after that convinced him it was a haunting. The longer the fear built, the less of him there was left, and he could do nothing to slow that descent. How was he supposed to know how to save himself? Who would have taught him? He had only ever talked to doctors in emergencies; times he’d been too injured to fix himself up at home, or times when some freaked out stranger had seen the state of him and insisted on calling an ambulance. There was no one he could have talked to that would have helped him understand. He could have just as easily died from a tooth infection. He still wouldn’t have made him make an appointment. He _couldn’t._ He didn’t know how.

Death was avoiding hundreds of near-death experiences every day and not even know it. It was the one day you turned right instead of left. It was the migraine you brushed off as withdrawal instead of the building pressure of a tumor. It was trusting the wrong person. Eating the wrong thing. It was being alive one moment and suddenly being nothing at all.

If you were lucky, you’d go out before the pain seeps into your bloodstream and starts pumping through your heart. If you were lucky, the death wouldn't be your fault. Just a series of events that lead to the end of a person that once was.

Gerry was not lucky. Death had wormed its way into his coat pocket and it had always only been a matter of time before he realized he had always, _always_ carried it with him. 

“Ugh,” the woman says. “That witch we met said the same thing.”

She slams the book shut.

  
  


Gerry opens his eyes to the new archivist.

His glasses are crooked. His hands have a tremor. There’s a galaxy of scars on his skin, some visible only to the eyes on Gerry’s hands. Even before he asks, Gerry’s certain the archivist didn’t call him because the hunters are dead.

“I thought you’d look different,” the archivist says. “Er—sorry. I just meant, I was under the impression you died in a hospital, but you, you don’t…”

“I didn’t let them take my clothes,” Gerry says. “No point in changing if I was going to die anyway.”

The archivist shifts uncomfortably.

“If I knew I’d be stuck like this forever, though, I’d of fixed my hair,” Gerry adds. It’s still mostly black, but he knows his roots have almost completely returned to brown. Or, the memory of brown, at least. It itches in a strangely mundane way. He had always been a bit particular about his hair. The fact that he doesn’t even have a hat to hide the mess makes him want to tear it all out, but, unfortunately, there’s not much luck of that, either.

“It has a certain charm,” the archivist says, lying through his teeth.

“Sure,” Gerry says, letting him.

“I have… questions,” the archivist continues hesitantly. “About Gertrude. And the Unknowing?”

“Burn my page,” Gerry says immediately. The archivist sputters. “I don’t care about the world ending, or whatever else you’ve got going on. The only thing that’s going to hurt me is staying here. And it’s not a pain you can feel while you’re living. You never know how wrong it is to be undead until it happens to you. I’m not supposed to be here. I don’t _want_ to be here.”

The archivist bites his lip. He’s been holding onto Gerry’s page with a thumb and finger this entire time. After a moment, the archivist struggles to grab the book with his other hand and, very carefully, tears his page out and holds it in his hand. It feels strangely personal, like he’s touching Gerry’s cheek.

“Thank you,” Gerry says.

“Let’s just hope you haven’t doomed us both,” the archivist grumbles, but he holds Gerry close to his chest. Gerry can’t feel it, of course. Death leaves no place for the lingering touch of another, much less a warm embrace.

Still.

He thinks it might feel nice.

Gerry tells the archivist what he knows, and gives his statement.

He says that he didn’t realize how sick he had gotten, because it’s easier than explaining he didn’t realize that getting better was a thing his body could do. He tells the archivist about his mother. He tells the archivist it wasn’t his fault. And the archivist nods along, like he’s known it all along.

It’s strange to give so much of himself so freely, especially now, when these memories are all he is. If it’s a toss between the book and the tape, though, Gerry thinks he’d rather have his last moments be the ones recording now. He had never expected a quiet death, but he thinks it might be worth it if it means that everything he is ends in a conversation with a friend.

“Thank you, Gerry,” the archivist says. “Is there—is there anything left? Some last request, a place to burn your—your remains, or…?” 

Is there anything Gerry wants, besides death? 

Of _course._

In all his time with the hunters, he’s only been outside once. There’s a part of him that wants to go again. To feel the sun on his skin. Let the breeze ruffle his hair. To watch the clouds, listen to the birds, to climb a tree and enjoy a new perspective.

More than anything, what Gerry wants is to enjoy a day in its fullness. To go on a vacation because there were sights he wanted to see, instead of because there was someone he was running from. To kiss someone, and not worry about it turning into a curse. To paint something for the love of it, instead of for the glory of the Eye. He wants to go to sleep in a warm bed, instead of fading out the whims of another. He wants to yawn awake after a good dream. To spend a day lounging around his house with no other purpose than simple existence.

But that was the wish of someone living.

It would do Gerry no good to think about what could have been. He wouldn’t be able to dream because he would never fall asleep. And he wouldn’t be able to feel the sun, no matter how brightly it shone in the sky. The most he could hope for was to be able to touch the absence of it. To see the sunlight pass through him and feel the lack of warmth echo through his soul. To be reminded, with every step, that he is a Thing That Should Not Be.

He couldn’t even have a cigarette.

The archivist is still waiting for his answer. Gerry stays silent as the archivist folds his page. He looks to Gerry with every crease, as if asking for permission. As if he knows he has Gerry’s entire existence in the palm of his hands, and wants to prove himself worthy.

“No,” Gerry says. “That’s it, really. I think I’d just like to go now, if it’s alright.”

In every way that matters, he’s still in the hospital, waiting for that one last wave of pain to finally overtake him. To white out his vision before he does something foolish, like cry out in a world that has never listened. The body he does not have still trembles with the desire for comfort, aches with a need that screams out _please stay with me_ and _I don’t want to die alone._

And this time, someone responds.

“Of course,” Jon says. “Thank you, Gerry. For everything.”

There is a hand on his skin and Gerry desperately wishes it wasn’t too late for him to grab it back. There is someone standing with him, who will not leave until he is finally, truly gone.

Gerry Keay closes his eyes, one last time.

_The kindness of a stranger, the hug of a friend, an unbroken promise that echoes through everything._

And through it all, Jonathan Sims holds him tight.

**Author's Note:**

> A list of ghosts, in order:  
> La Pascualita  
> Evita Peron--yes, the first lady of Argentina. Saints are just ghosts by a different name.  
> The Edinburgh Missing Piper Boy  
> The Edinburgh Headless Drummer Boy
> 
> Feel free to pester me on tumblr @ofdreamsanddoodles if you'd like to hear more about my thoughts on ghosts, including Gerry Keay


End file.
